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I don't know how much experience you have in watching anime outside of certain genre's but from all that I've seen from anime ranging over the span of 5 decades I would say that the vast majority of anime look far better than what I saw in that trailer. I don't think anime would be the popular medium worldwide that it is today if most shows looked inferior to that trailer. That's a scary thought actually.

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I don't know how much experience you have in watching anime outside of certain genre's but from all that I've seen from anime ranging over the span of 5 decades I would say that the vast majority of anime look far better than what I saw in that trailer. I don't think anime would be the popular medium worldwide that it is today if most shows looked inferior to that trailer. That's a scary thought actually.

Here we go. First, I think I mentioned on the last page that I'm nowhere near what you'd call a fan of K-ON!! (and Lucky Star and whatever) because of their characters and plotline. I simply enjoy it for their production values. Now, since we got that out of the way, I also have watched a lot of other shows which by your logic must feature superior animation since they're more appealing to the mainstream public throughout the world (lol). They'd include stuff like Gundam and Ghost in the Shell, for instance. Or maybe even more experimental things, in the veins of Nakamura's Mononoke and Satoshi Kon's Paprika.

Now uh, I'm sure this might come as a shock, and then maybe not, but shows such as Milky Holmes and Yumekui Merry have featured much more impressive animation throughout their runs than, say, Gundam 00. It's not that Gundam 00 was incapable of having good animation, but it was far too occasional and overall the series had a lot of episodes which just looked cheap most of the time. This isn't really an "opinion", by the way, you might as well check episode 20 of S2, for instance, the whole part before the OP looks incredibly stiff and the characters overall are drawn poorly if compared to how they should be looking. And this is commonplace in something with such mainstream appeal as Gundam, because, really, your "everyday" fan hardly will care about little details such as these. As long as the plot's good and they get their mechas, it's fine. In the end they will make a profit over merchandise and other things, so there isn't exactly the same level of care being put into it as the late-night shows, where most studios are small companies which are fighting for their consumers to grab the DVDs and remain alive.

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If you take into account a very small fraction of what the industry puts out (i.e light novel/visual novel adaptations) Kyoto Animation's....animation fairs very well. I can agree with this much. However take what they've put out in the grand scope of things and they really don't fare that well at all quite frankly. Again just going by my experiences.

I'm sorry, but, come again? A small fraction? Where have you been for the last few years? I'd say around 70% of most new shows each season are some sort of adaptation of a shounen/seinen manga and/or LN, with the occasional eroge and then you *might* get some really "incredible original show". The reason I picked those titles - aside from their quality - was precisely this. They aren't a "small fraction", they're the majority right now, and among those they're shows which have been capable of showing interesting animation. That may or may not be pleasant to you, but in the end shows such as Ghost in the Shell or Read Drive are the minority. I'm not trying to prove here that Nichijou looks better than Hayao Miyazaki's movies, or that it's the most impressive thing on TV right now, but it's a fact that this trailer featured much better animation than MOST of the shows that are airing nowadays. It doesn't mean Ghost in the Shell wasn't better, or Seirei no Moribito, or whatever the heck you want to add here. But like I said, x being better doesn't make y bad.

Really, I'm not sure what else I can add. If whatever I'm saying simply doesn't seem right to you, then it's too bad, but I don't think we'll ever be on the same page. You seem keen on putting down shows which might have some sort of relation to "moe" archtypes and things you don't like, as if they were inferior because of that. But this is completely irrelevant where good animation quality is concerned. I couldn't give a rats ass about Shuugo Chara (S1), but it's a show which is constantly being acclaimed for its animation, whereas I love Mugen no Ryvius, but it's a show that didn't really catch my eyes even once where animation quality was regarded. In the end, though, if I'm unable to change your views on this, I'll just give up trying to do so now. Because it's clear that I'm seeing something in animation and you might be looking at a different thing, be it art "style" or designs that please you, instead of well, the movement.

Here we go. First, I think I mentioned on the last page that I'm nowhere near what you'd call a fan of K-ON!! (and Lucky Star and whatever) because of their characters and plotline. I simply enjoy it for their production values. Now, since we got that out of the way, I also have watched a lot of other shows which by your logic must feature superior animation since they're more appealing to the mainstream public throughout the world (lol). They'd include stuff like Gundam and Ghost in the Shell, for instance. Or maybe even more experimental things, in the veins of Nakamura's Mononoke and Satoshi Kon's Paprika.

Now uh, I'm sure this might come as a shock, and then maybe not, but shows such as Milky Holmes and Yumekui Merry have featured much more impressive animation throughout their runs than, say, Gundam 00. It's not that Gundam 00 was incapable of having good animation

And that's about where you completely lost me.

Anyway, yes, I look at that trailer and I see mostly static images of bland looking character designs doing wild takes and making silly faces and you look at it and see something that outstrips the majority of what is airing today. I can't even begin to comprehend where you're seeing this "attention to animation detail" and I can probably assume that from your point of view you can't comprehend how I'm not seeing it. If the show comes out and it turns out that there's actually a great number of well-animated sequences of the kind you would want to show to an animator's class as an example of something they might want to strive for I will say that the trailer was actually misleading, however if it comes out and it's still largely static images with one exceptional sequence every episode or two (which seems to be the norm for Kyoani from what I've seen of them) I would not really be surprised. As of now you are correct, there's very little that can get me to call that trailer anything exceptional animation wise since I see very little movement or "attention to detail" and nothing looks impressive at all.

edit: In retrospect I think I'm being unfair to the other posters if I don't at least give them a way to comprehend what I am seeing in the trailer and where I'm coming from so I'm just going to quickly break it down here:

0:00-0:04: Still shot of a classroom sign
0:05-0:09: Mostly still shot of a simplistically drawn suburban landscape with a train moving across representing the sole motion
0:10: Paper airplane being thrown
0:11-0:27: Various shots including a girl doing a cartwheel, a girl with blue hair standing motionless while her mouth flaps, a girl with glasses and a blank stare drawing a circular motion and closing a book. There's motion here.
0:27-0:30: Girls doing wild takes with no backgrounds behind them.
0:30-0:39: Girl with spittle coming out of her mouth as she talks and slightly moves her head to the side, other girl standing still while corona of light shines off of her
0:40-0:49: Cat playing around with a Kleenex box and a girl doing a wild take. This is one of the few scenes where I see anything exceptional, but it also makes use of obvious repeating frames as well.
0:50-0:54: Girl spinning around and smashing into a locker. This actually looks good, probably the best shot out of anything in the trailer and no use of repeating frames that I can see.
0:55-1:00: Girls doing....something on a train. This looks good too.
1:00-1:20: Various shots of people talking while a couple of other people make the occasional motion in the background. I assume this is what people mean when they talk about "attention to detail".
1:22-1:24: Guy making the same sweeping motion a couple of times
1:25-1:27: Still shot of a building sign
1:28-1:42: Various shots including a girl taking a bite of ice cream, a girl swaying back and forth, a girl drawing, all of which feature the same animation cycle looping.
1:42-1:46: A girl floating motionlessly through a void while slowing rotating clockwise
1:46-1:55: Various shots including more wild takes, a girl using another girl as a drum set with animation loops and again a girl standing in a void albeit with some decent zoom in effect for another wild take.
1:55-2:00: A cat jumping up in the air while scratching in an animation loop
2:00-2:05: Various shots including dramatic lighting on a girl, a still shot of another girl and a cat freaking out.
2:05-2:10 A girl striking a pose. There's again some decent zoom effect put to use in here and some actual motion, but a good chunk of it comes from an extreme close up of a fast and there's not exactly much detail in the frame.
2:10-End: Various shots including a girl walking into a room and a girl walking towards train tracks from far off in the distance such that I can't really make her out well.

So basically aside from a 10 second or so stretch I didn't see all that much motion making use of non-repeating frames and even then I'd still call those sequences about par compared to most TV anime I see nowadays.

I think it's the debate over the artistic quality of animation over mere technical aspects. A show can be low budget/technically unimpressive (fewer drawings, slackened character art, minimal processing + effects), yet feature very expressive and creative animation through the superior skills of the individual animators. That's where Milky Holmes succeeded with fans. Yumekui Merry uses a similar strategy, although frame counts are further reduced in favor of detailed art.

A show can also have a big budget - high frame rates, lots of visual gloss, good backgrounds, flashy effects - yet feature bog-standard or stiff motion. That's often the result of hiring inexperienced or overseas animators as opposed to renowned talent.

Creating anime is a tradeoff between the two. Because of budget and time constraints, it's hard to combine both well-drawn/highly detailed character art (time-consuming to keep art on-model) and expressive, fluid animation (requires many key frames and unique talent). To some extent, you have to sacrifice one for the other since schedules are tight and a limited talent pool is shared amongst numerous studios (exception = KyoAni).

The casual viewer tends to appreciate the glossy look while paying few attention to artistic details, which is why actual animation is often sacrificed.

I think it's the debate over the artistic quality of animation over mere technical aspects. A show can be low budget/technically unimpressive (fewer drawings, slackened character art, minimal processing + effects), yet feature very expressive and creative animation through the superior skills of the individual animators. That's where Milky Holmes succeeded with fans. Yumekui Merry uses a similar strategy, although frame counts are further reduced in favor of detailed art.

A show can also have a big budget - high frame rates, lots of visual gloss, good backgrounds, flashy effects - yet feature bog-standard or stiff motion. That's often the result of hiring inexperienced or overseas animators as opposed to renowned talent.

Creating anime is a tradeoff between the two. Because of budget and time constraints, it's hard to combine both well-drawn/highly detailed character art (time-consuming to keep art on-model) and expressive, fluid animation (requires many key frames and unique talent). To some extent, you have to sacrifice one for the other since schedules are tight and a limited talent pool is shared amongst numerous studios (exception = KyoAni).

The casual viewer tends to appreciate the glossy look while paying few attention to artistic details, which is why actual animation is often sacrificed.

This is why I made the point above about Kyoto Animation not having a monopoly on detail in animation. Again there seems to be this mythology surrounding the company that they somehow have an edge over everyone else when it comes to animation that nobody is capable of matching at that they somehow exist in some exceptional zone where the constraints and shortcomings of the art form of animation simply don't apply. It's kind of ridiculous.

I think I should also mention that I definitely understand how animation works and where the trade offs are, and that no group of animators exists in a zone where they are magically able to get around all of them. I should warn that nobody is going to be doing their points (and the ones you make are completely agreeable otherwise) any favours by continuing to promote this mythology. Let's keep this discussion down to earth please.

I think it's the debate over the artistic quality of animation over mere technical aspects. A show can be low budget/technically unimpressive (fewer drawings, slackened character art, minimal processing + effects), yet feature very expressive and creative animation through the superior skills of the individual animators. That's where Milky Holmes succeeded with fans. Yumekui Merry uses a similar strategy, although frame counts are further reduced in favor of detailed art.

This is pretty much correct. And it's the fun of watching anime for me, and why I like it so much. If I cared more about how many frames of in-between animation people can add to a show as to make it "better", then I'd probably be watching some american cartoons, instead. Almost every one of those will feature more fluid animation than japanese ones, but that doesn't make them "better" animated. And I think that's where Kaioshin and I somehow aren't clicking with each other.

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Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

This is why I made the point above about Kyoto Animation not having a monopoly on detail in animation. Again there seems to be this mythology surrounding the company that they somehow have an edge over everyone else when it comes to animation that nobody is capable of matching at that they somehow exist in some exceptional zone where the constraints and shortcomings of the art form of animation simply don't apply. It's kind of ridiculous.

Again...There's no monopoly in animation. Kyoto Animation isn't the studio which can do the best animation in the industry. No, not even Kyoto Animation has full episodes (or trailers) that look incredible from start to finish. No one does. Unless it's a movie, and even then there are still still-shots and there are scenes where there are repeated frames, and obviously you can't have very talented key animators working on it throughout the whole thing. Nor making some incredible amounts of keyframes just because.

Looking at your little deconstruction of that trailer and I overall actually agree with most of what you've said. Still, in my view, you miss some other scenes which do have a certain appeal to them. This one, for instance:

1:30~1:34 -- Her movement (the thumbs up and winking while doing a slight different cute pose) in this scene is very well done. I think looking at the way her shirt and skirt both move is a nice way to illustrate what I mean. In your random show, there's no way a simple scene like this would look as good as it does. It's something minimal, sure, but it's something that I could notice while watching.

Also, do note that a lot of the scenes where anything of note (in a context of a series like this, at least. I know kleenex waving wouldn't be very exciting in Fullmetal Alchemist, but god knows what it was about in the first place without any dialogue) was happening you ended up actually saying it looked good. In any series you'll find moments where there's some transition scenes, showing backgrounds and so on. Many of these were present here. But each time <something> was happening, be it a conversation between characters or them playing around, there was actual animation on it. And even the bits where you say have "repeated frames" are at least pleasant to the eyes.

The thing with Kyoto Animation, and what you call a "myth", is that by working with in-house people in every show they're simply able to have the same quality in every other episode (of every other show they do, as well!). If you have a minute or two worth of pretty nice animation in every episode, that's already much better than your usual anime by some no name staff (i.e, the majority of them). Add to that the fact that by not needing to outsource their stuff constantly, even the "regular" scenes don't feature problems which are commonplace in quite a lot of shows, such as continuity errors everywhere, and the very recurring poor in-between animation that instead of helping actually destroys whatever the key animator created, with weird drawings that simply look distorted compared to how they should look, giving birth to what people on the internet love to call "QUALITY" (for lack of better term and to make it easy to understand).

That said, however, I hope that by reading all of this you'll stop insisting on the whole monopoly thing, at least when referring to whatever I'm telling you. It's really hard to try to say why something is good if you keep replying to something I never said. Right now this is what happens:

Blue: "Kyoto Animation does good animation, that trailer had some nice scenes, so I'm interested in watching it".

Kaioshin: "There's a myth about Kyoto doing better animation than everyone else, how can this be, stop saying it looks good cause it doesn't!"

Throughout this whole conversation I never even implied Kyoto was the best studio or that no one could top it off. All I've been saying is that the trailer featured some good animation, better than the majority of shows airing. And when I mean the majority, I'm including every series out there. If there are four (for reference, I'd say this is a pretty good estimate regarding how many shows are able to pull off animation like that every week per season) shows in a season of twenty that feature some good animation, then to me that's pretty significant. From those scenes you mentioned and said that they looked "good", I can't find anything on that level on most (i.e, not all. Like I said, Merry probably had a lot of it, so did Star Driver, for instance. Actually, SD is one its own league with having awesome action every week) of the things I'm watching right now, and this is why I (and many other people) will gladly watch Kyoto shows while saying they have "good animation".

I think I should also mention that I definitely understand how animation works and where the trade offs are, and that no group of animators exists in a zone where they are magically able to get around all of them. I should warn that nobody is going to be doing their points (and the ones you make are completely agreeable otherwise) any favours by continuing to promote this mythology. Let's keep this discussion down to earth please.

If we were doing that, you wouldn't be in every Kyoani show thread doing what you usually do (and get defensive if anyone slaps Sunrise with your own arguments).

Anyway, enough of that, let's return to discussing Nichijou the anime, not Kyoto Animation (we have a thread for that!).

I'm more curious what they will add to this series. There may be enough material for 13 or 14 episodes, but I've not seen all the source material. However there are quite a lot of parts in the manga that have no dialogue. It would be interesting how they managed to handle these...such as the one about the card castle were not a word is spoken in the story. Because while KyoAni is known for sticking fairly close to their source materials, they always add something to fill in the gaps.

The art style of Nichijou looks simplistic, and most of the scenes are done with static backgrounds. These kind of things are easy to animate. I've got the feeling people from KyoAni got lazy recently. Well, but since they have a well established name, they can pass with it.

From the trailer I reluctantly linked this series with Azumanga and PaniPoniDash pr mix of them because of the colours but thanks I was wrong, this series has nothing to do with those two, this one lacks or fails to transmite the energy.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........................ Hmm?! Oh, it's over?
Dang, that was boring. It feels like there is potential, but the tempo for the episode 0 just felt so bad. Especially bad was the first part. Dragged that whole thing for longer than it should have been dragged...
It could get better. Let's hope. It isn't impossible. I mean, Lucky Star started out boring, but got better. (Oh wait, the director changed before it improved...)

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The loli doctor could probably kill if they decided to crank up her screen time using that voice.

It was a boring episode, and had none of the material from the first volume in it. Nothing particularly wacky happened...aside from the talking cat that caught me off guard. It was Minoru Shiraishi, I believe.

Sigh. Nichijou is not exactly the highest-profile work of the season, and this ado about nothing has already begun in earnest. The humor in the series, from the OVA episode 0 that I just watched, isn't going to be for everyone. (come to think of it, Kaioshin should be in the mess that is Madoka with SHAFT if one needs to address the most controversial piece with the most lasting impact at least to this year...)

To be fair, this animation really feels like it's not nearly was well endowed budget wise as K-on was. The OVA's pacing personally is by far the slowest tempo wise of all the Kyoani slice of life. Although, I like the BGM chosen. The animation is even less vibrant than that of Lucky Star, but it's fine the way it is I guess. This show isn't going to appeal to everyone at all, but it will be a very safe mainstream release. As it is right now, evan Fractale would be a harder sale than Nichijou when it comes to safe for family label.

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It is because that I think the birth of a story... is from people dreaming of a happy ending. ~Misaka Shiori

I'm thinking of doing another one of those as I'm watching it commentaries (like I did with the Haruhi movie) later tonight after I'm home from work. I figure as much as people tend to loathe my comments on Kyoani shows they also almost expect to hear from me on this at some point. Plus since it's short and I have a hunch I'm going to be somewhat in sync with the regulars for a change I don't see it leading to a huge argument.

This test of a Kyoani production versus my ability to maintain interest should prove fascinating indeed.

This test of a Kyoani production versus my ability to maintain interest should prove fascinating indeed.

Although we all know how this is going to end up by now, don't we?

Anyway... I tried to give it a go last night and was sorely disappointed by it. Or, well, I don't think disappointed is the best word to say because I'd read a bit of the manga and it definitely didn't click with me, but I guess I was expecting Kyoto to spice things up a bit, as they sucessfully did with K-ON! in a couple of episodes. Didn't happen.

Production wasn't really bad, but I guess it wasn't exactly good either. Although most of the well animated scenes from that small PV turned out to be from this episode zero, which was nice. But then what actually bothered me the most were the couple of scenes where they had no background whatsoever with just the character standing in a corner while doing something. I'm not sure if it was trying to mimick those blank panels in gag manga, which are often common, but it didn't really work very well animated. Which isn't to say that it does work in manga format, either, but I guess it's something that people just ignore or grew used to. So, yeah, in a nutshell, it didn't feature anything amazing, but it also didn't have anything that looked bad. As panzerfan put it, playing it safe would actually describe it very well.

That said, the characters and the story (or complete lack thereof) are what's hurting this show the most. We get it, it's a gag manga, but the whole episode felt like watching a bunch of characters do and talk about absolutely nothing. In a way, it was a lot like the very first episode of Lucky Star, although the latter at least had the whole "I don't quite believe they're discussing how to start eating this chocolate thing" factor, which at least made it amusing in some way.

Overall though... I'll probably check again when the real show starts airing, but my expectations are as low as they can be. It's not like they ever were high to begin with, but this little OAD did little to help that. At this point, it's a shame, but I can hardly see Kyoto ever being contracted to work on anything but these kind of shows. I'll still check them out for anything visually interesting, which, I'm sure, will still show up every episode or two considering the staff that's working on it, but unless there's some huge improvement I can't see myself enjoying the thing as a whole.

From what I've seen so far in the first volume of the manga, I think they can make this really funny since some of the jokes in there seem, to me at least, to be very visual in nature. That can be played with a lot. The trouble with this episode is that nothing is happening. I have no idea if any of this material is from the manga as none of what I saw was from the first volume. I am wanting to see how they pull off some of the more visual gags that seem to be in most chapters.

Kind of surprised by the reaction in here. I watched this, expecting the worst (I've read most of the manga, and wasn't sure which way the studio would take it), and I found it to give off almost Azumanga Daioh vibes. I would think a calm, lightly humorous, slice of life series might be just the medicine the doctor would order given the situation over there right now.

As for the comment about how it would be better if SHAFT had done it... I am a HUGE SHAFT fan (heck, I'll know I've made it if I can convince Shinbo to do an adaptation of my book series), but I really don't think this series would hold up well with their touch.